Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world that can be thy place .
Ezra Pound, Canto LXXLI
They’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.
There’s been a mistake
There’s been a mistake. I don’t know you; you don’t know me. No one is coming after me. I’m not that important. Neither are you. No one with their wits about them could believe you are the only one who keeps “them” from getting to me. But the pitch has a familiar ring.
The old, old story?
It sounds like “the old, old story of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love,” but this story is a far cry from the one in the New Testament. The Biblical story includes a warning, attributed to Jesus: “Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will lead many astray.”
It’s a biblical way of saying, “Don’t mistake a wolf disguised as Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandma for the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
Life with Buddy
Even a parrot can quote scripture. But there’s a difference: the parrot has no idea what it’s saying. Human beings do. Take Buddy, for example. Shortly after arriving for a visit with old friends, the phone rang. Harry stayed put. Knowing that any call to Harry could be an emergency, we encouraged Harry or Anna to feel free to take the call.
Harry raised his finger to his lips. Anna smiled and whispered, “Shhhh!
The phone continued to ring. When it stopped, a voice from an adjacent room yelled, “Harry! It’s for you! Harry. . . it’s for you!”
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, an African Grey Parrot doesn’t know it. After Buddy had fooled us with his imitation of the phone ringing, with precise intervals between the rings, and calling Harry to the phone, Buddy went on to recite the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…” before imitating the sounds of Anna he’d heard every morning: brushing her teeth, gargling, and other sounds not fit to print.
Shakespeare: “O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” wrote Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. “An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge: To See More Clearly, and author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN.
In the eyes of QAnon and Christian fundamentalism, I’m a heretic. I don’t believe in Satan. Not that Satan, the devilish opponent of God. But trying to make some sense of life these days has led me to take another look at Satan.
The biblical Satan is the personification of trickery and the reptilian impulses that lie in wait in every mortal psyche. Satan is a con artist. “You will not die,” whispers the serpent to the mortals in the Genesis story of humanity’s fall from paradisaical innocence. Likewise, in the wilderness temptations of Matthew and Luke, it is Satan who lures “the man for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s description of Christ) to being a man who cares only for himself. Satin is the personification of the lies that flips reality on its head. Satan is a Con Artist.
Con artistry is never far away. Sometimes we come face-to-face with it. I see it inside the courtroom in New York City where a jury wrestles to disentangling truth from falsehood, evidence from sham, honesty from fraudulence, in full view national figures, members of the U.S. House of Representatives take their seats in room as visiting dignitaries who are surely recognizable to at least one member of the jury. Their physical presence is intimidating; it strikes me as its own kind of witness and jury tampering, a violation of the defendant’s gag order.
Outside the courtroom, I see these same Members of the United States House of Representatives, each of whom has sworn the Constitutional oath of office, line up take their turns behind the microphone and media cameras to denounce the judicial system, malign court personnel, the judge, prosecutors and their families, and read aloud. Up is down and down is up; right is wrong and wrong is right; truth-telling is out; conning is in. I hear Pinocchio’s surrogates betray their oaths of office in hopes of becoming Pinocchio’s right hand. Jiminy Cricket is a distant memory. Conscience is nowhere to be found.
Yesterday confirmed what I know of the biblical Satan who never was but always is wherever there’s an Achilles’ Heel – the vulnerability of mortals to the Con that I and we can do no wrong.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, May15, 2024.
I didn’t feel like shouting Hosannas and waving palm branches this Palm Sunday. So I did something else. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s hymn, “God of Grace and God of Glory,” written in 1930, a time as uncertain as this, cried out for attention. “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.” The title of this sermon was ready before the sermon had been written. Fosdick’s lyrics led me to Psalm 82 addressing “the great assembly of the gods . . . by which all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Here’s the sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN, the loving congregation that welcomed me for nine years (2005-2014) on the way to retirement.
Thanks to Shepherd of the Hill Elder Chuck Lieber for taping this long-winded sermon on Palm Sunday at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.
PSALM 82 NIV
God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the “gods”:
“How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
“The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
“I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’ But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like every other ruler.”
Arise, God, judge the world, for all nations belong to you.
Psalm 82 niv
Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian and social commentator, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock Publishers), 49 brief (2-4 pages) on faith and life; Brooklyn Park, MN, April 7, 2024.
The greeting struck me as peculiar. “Happy Holy Week” is more than a little strange. Something didn’t smell right.
Rev. Al Sharpton response to the “God Bless the USA Bible”
Preying on Praying
Only a person ignorant or defiant of the heart-wrenching events of Jesus’ last days — Peter’s deceitful denials (“I do not know the man”) in the High Priest’s courtyard; the self-serving betrayals and abandonment of Jesus’ closest ‘friends’ and students; Jesus braiding a whip and driving out the money-changers in a fit of rage, turning over the money-changers’ tables for making his Father’s house into a den of robbers; Judas Iscariot, the apostle entrusted with the group’s purse, exchanging intelligence identifying Jesus’ whereabouts; an apostle drawing a dagger at his arrest, cutting off the High Priest servant’s ear, followed by Jesus’ rebuke of the way of violence; the release of one Jesus (Jesus Barabbas), the nationalist insurrectionist prisoner awaiting execution in place of the other (Jesus of Nazareth) in whom Pilate finds no guilt); Jesus’ final meal in an upper room of an unidentified dwelling; the invitation to “Take, eat. This is my body, broken for you” — would wish Christians a happy Holy Week.
Mark Twain Advice
I feel a bit like Mark Twain the day he responded to a sanctimonious businessman notoriously for his unscrupulous business practices.
“Before I die,” said the shyster, “I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud from the top.”
“I have a better idea,” said Twain. “You could stay home in Boston and keep them.”
The Way to Easter
You can get to the Easter Bunny without walking through the events of Holy Week, but you can’t get to Easter without walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It’s all there in Christian Scripture. It makes no difference how many Bibles you have —”I have many;” “it’s my favorite book,” or how much you love it — if you’ve never opened one.
Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of "Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness" (2017 Wipf and Stock Publishers), 49 two to four-page meditations on faith and public life, Brooklyn Park, MN, April 4, 2024.
Who but a sociopath on his way to trial on charges of buying a porn star’s silence would think the American people would fall for a stunt like this? It’s a short step from selling gold sneakers for $399/ pair to selling another first of its kind, the “God Bless the USA Bible,” complete with a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible….
All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in his video posted on Truth Social. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”
Donald J. Trump,
Those who practice their Christian faith know that “Happy Holy Week!” is a sign of the greeter’s unfamiliarity with the faith. We don’t wish each other a “Happy Holy Week.” Tears of joy (not happiness) well up only after tears of our own participation in the horror and sadness of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and in the haunting silence of god-forsakenness on Holy Saturday.
What Jesus Saw from the Cross by James Tissot
“Then said Jesus, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.”
Gospel of Luke 23:34 NRSV
Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian pastor (H.R.), public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock Publishers), Brooklyn Park, MN, March 27, 2024, Wednesday of Holy Week.
“God Made Trump” is a masterpiece of cunning. Borrowing creation images from the Book of Genesis 1-3 and the Good Shepherd of fPsalm 23, Ezekiel 34:2-34, John 10:1-2), the three-minute video posted on Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, goes like this:
“And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker,' so God gave us Trump," the narrator says in the same style that the Book of Genesis in the Bible is written, while a video of Earth from space flashes to a photo of a young Trump.
"God said, 'I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office, and stay past midnight at a meeting of the state, so God made Trump," the narrator says.
Trump is shown interacting with world leaders, signing executive orders, posing for photos with his supporters, hugging the American flag, and walking onto Air Force One, with former First Lady Melania Trump as the narrator describes God's "need" for the former president.
"God said, 'I need somebody who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of the wolves when they attack," says the narrator, while the viewer sees a wolf baring its teeth and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), "a man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won't ever leave or forsake them."
Personal Reflection: ‘God’ and ‘the gods’
The Reform tradition of Christianity in which I stand views the Bible as a pair of spectacles through which to see God, the world, and oneself more clearly. Looking more clearly at “God Made Trump,” you will see something missing — the letter ‘s’, as in, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” We live among the gods that become God for us. A fitting title would be “The gods Made Trump.”
James Tissot, “The Good Shepherd.”
Mr. Magoo
“God Made Trump” is a rip off that takes off our glasses and turns it viewers into Mr. Magoo. It takes advantage of impaired eyesight. It blurs the ability to differentiate between hype and reality, fraud and truth, pretence and piety, subterfuge and honesty. We are all easily confused. “A little learning,” wrote Alexander Pope, “is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”
Impostors of God
A cursory reading of the biblical creation and Good Shepherd stories is a shallow draught. A deeper drink guides the reader into what Karl Barth called “the strange new world of the Bible,” in which we see more clearly. Though monotheists, atheists, and agnostics are of diverse opinions about the one God, they agree that there is not more than one, i.e., the gods do not exist. Those who claim the Bible as their source of truth and life should know better.
Constitutional lawyer, lay theologian William Stringfellow describes the gods as “imposters of God,” which the great theologian and philosopher of culture Paul Tillich saw as substitutes for the “God above god” (life’s Ultimate Concern) and the gods of real but penultimate concern among which all of us live in daily life, e.g. religion, work, money, family, status, sex, patriotism, which, although part of the fabric of human life, become substitutes for that which concerns us ultimately. Living anxiously among the gods leaves us restless – “Our hearts are restless,” said St. Augustine, “until they find their rest in Thee.”
Jacket of An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange LandPaul Johannes Tillich (1886-1965)
Serious study of the Bible leads a reader to notice something missing in “God Made Trump.” The gods of the First Commandment have been deleted – “I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other gods before Me. No longer are their other gods before God. Cut in half, the First Commandment is castrated, but, in reality, only the gods remain.
Seen through the eyes of the First Commandment, Stringfellow, and Tillich, the real question is not whether God made Trump; the question is two-fold: “Which gods made Trump?” and “Which gods are making us in their images?
The Incarnation of the gods
On June 14th, 1946, the gods look looked up and said, “Let us make a creature in our images who will incarnate all of us,” and, so they did. For six days the gods who aspired to be God laid aside their competitive urges to work together as a consortium. They would be godlier than “the God above god” (Paul Tillich), Maker of heaven and earth, whose fatal flaw was to grant the gods freedom to do their mischief.
So, the gods of Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth laid aside their several powers for the sake of greater effectiveness. They put their heads together to craft an Immaculate Conception suited to their purposes.
Their creation would be the Incarnation of themselves and would embody all that the less-blessed creatures wanted for themselves: freedom from anxiety, absolute certainty, security, safety, and wealth. So, the gods found a virgin in Queens, and Mary Anne gave birth to her fourth-born child and named him Donald. The things the lesser creatures envied and desired for themselves – his unshakeable self-confidence, freedom to have any woman he wanted, his mastery of the arts of entertainment, prevarication, hypocrisy and greed, exemption from legal restraint and pangs of conscience, fearlessness in the valley of the shadow of death and prosecution, and palaces of silver and gold – would be theirs, just like him.
“God Made Trump” is an adaptation of “God Made a Farmer,” Paul Harvey’s speech to the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention that paid tribute to the American farmer’s dedication to caring for the land, plowing the fields, caring for animals. “God Made a Farmer” honored the farmer without idolizing him. It did not make wrongful use of the Name of God.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian and social critic, author of “Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness” (2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 short commentaries on faith and life. Writing from Brooklyn Park, MN, Feb. 7, 2024.
My son once asked me, “Dad, what is time?” After a long pause, I responded, “I don’t know. It’s a perennial question of philosophers, theologians, and other thoughtful people. But, so far as I can tell, time is what we have.”
Some people think that time isn’t real, that it’s a human construct and only eternity is real. They think of time as the prison of the soul, the prelude to eternal life.
That always seemed a bit strange to me. Like the imaginary friends that children make up when they’re afraid of being alone in the dark. I could never understand. The animals know what time is. They also experience eternity. They wake and sleep to the rhythm of sunrise and sunset that marks what we call time. They know nothing about clock time or the names of days, months, seasons or years, but they live in the reality of time.
Time is what we have between birth and death. Eternity is the depth of time, the Mystery beneath, within, and beyond the limits of time. We participate in the eternal, but we are not eternal.
The illusion of superiority to the web of nature — the idea that the human species is nature’s singular exception – is a fabrication peculiar to the species that considers itself conscious. The imaginary friend of eternal life may help us sleep better at night, but it leads to slaughter and, eventually, to species suicide.
Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death) saw the denial of death as bedrock to American culture. The denial of death — the refusal to acknowledge death as real; the flight from the gnawing sense of our mortality – not only deprecates life here and now; it takes into its hands the life and death of those different from ourselves. It builds towers to itself that reach toward the heavens while it plunders an earth it considers too lowly for its lofty aspirations.
Time is our friend and time is our limit. We are meant for this. “Grace and pride never lived in the same place,” says an old Scottish proverb, for pride always seeks to exceed what is given (grace).
Time is what we have. Time is mortal participation in the glory of God. If there’s more, it will only by grace.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian “Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness” (2017 Wipf and Stock, Brooklyn Park, MN, January 1, 2024
While brewing the coffee this morning, I remembered writing a commentary on the power of language. “The Language of Demagoguery” first appeared on Views from the Edge in 2012, long before the word ‘weaponization’ muscled its way into American public discourse. Here’s the piece. Though no longer in the pulpit, It still speaks for me.
Words are POWERFUL! Sometimes those who preach wonder whether our words matter. But reading this paragraph in Timothy Egan’s NYT, “Deconstructing a Demagogue,”reminded me of just how powerful they are:
Back in 1994, while plotting his takeover of the House, [Newt] Gingrich circulated a memo on how to use words as a weapon. It was called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” Republicans were advised to use certain words in describing opponents — sick, pathetic, lie, decay, failure, destroy. That was the year, of course, when Gingrich showed there was no floor to his descent into a dignity-free zone, equating Democratic Party values with the drowning of two young children by their mother, Susan Smith, in South Carolina.
Today, if you listen carefully to any Gingrich takedown, you’ll usually hear words from the control memo.
Timothy Egan, “Deconstructing a Demagogue,” New York Times, 01/26/2012
And that’s just the beginning of the story of how language is used and abused for purposes of social manipulation. Gingrich knew that language is “A Key Mechanism of Control.” Those who are well-schooled in theology and politics know that language is the primary mechanism of mind control: truth becomes falsehood and falsehood becomes truth; beauty becomes ugliness and ugliness becomes beauty; goodness becomes evil and evil becomes goodness, twisted by the language of innuendo and word association.
Growing Cynicism
The cynicism that pervades the American electorate is due, in part, to this demagogic use of language. Words are precious things. Holy things. Sacred things. When they get twisted, they become vulgar and profane, one might even say ‘demonic’ in the sense in which Paul Tillich defined ‘demonic’: the twisting of the good. “The claim of something finite to infinity or to divine greatness is the characteristic of the demonic” (Paul Tillich, “Life and It’s Ambiguities,” Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, p. 102).
Paul Tillich, “The Courage to Be”
Words are sacred. And those who abuse them enter into the darkness of the demonic twisting that led James Russell Lowell to write the hymn lyrics I sang as a child:
Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood…. Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet t’is truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong , Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadows, Keeping watch above His own.
Hymn “Once to every man and nation,” James Russell Lowell
Gordon C. Stewart public theologian, Brooklyn Park, MN, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), December 5, 2023.
Every once in awhile, reflecting on a moment of time leads me to look for what I may have said in a sermon at Shepherd of the Hill. I post “Assurance in the Storm” in hope it may speak a word of assurance while living through the storm.
Gordon C. Stewart, sermon “Assurance in the Storm,” Brooklyn Park, MN, Sunday, November 12, 2023.
“Truth Social,” Donald Trump’s social media platform, and Donald Trump’s use of it have two things in common. As a platform, Truth Social is neither truthful nor social. It’s a propaganda machine — untruthful and anti-social. Donald Trump’s self-serving posts are the same, untruthful and antisocial. They reflect the defense strategy Roy Cohn taught him years ago. “Never defend! Always attack! Attack, attack, attack!” Roy Cohn fried whatever and whomever stood in his way.
Two featured news headlines — “Trump reverts to scorched-earth political strategy as he runs for ’24” (NYT), and “In U.S., Phoenix tops them all; climate change threatens health” (Associated Press)— strike me this morning as two sides of the same coin. The US Constitution and Earth are being scorched by an indicted former president and his party. Denial may have worked before now, but it’s harder to ignore when Phoenix and Death Valley hit record-breaking temperatures while the forests are ablaze in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada; the Northeast U.S. is awash with flooding and the scenes are most everywhere around the globe.
It’s time to listen to Bill Nye, the Science Guy
“Do you believe climate change is real? Is human impact making the earth less inhabitable?” should be the FIRST questions a voter asks a candidate. “Yes or No?” If the answer is No, or the candidate does a tap dance, it’s time to turn our backs, and find a candidate who answers “Yes.”
Seven detestable things
This direct question to candidates goes hand in hand with the seven detestable things named in the Book of Proverbs:
• haughty eyes; • a lying tongue; • hands that shed innocent blood; • a heart that devises wicked schemes; • feet that are quick to rush into evil; • a false witness who pours out lies; and • a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition
At the Gala dinner at the Washington Hilton that ended this year’s Faith and Freedom Coalition Annual Conference (23–24 June 2023), the featured speaker brought his haughty eyes, lying tongue, heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that quickly rush into evil, and mouth that pours out lies to arouse the adrenaline of a crowd that claims to know their Bibles.
“Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me,” he declares, “I consider it a great badge of courage. I am being indicted for you….” The faithful lift their Bibles and flags in rapturous worship and praise.
Deception, denial, scorched-earth, and scorched Earth
When a candidate blames his criminal indictments and climate change as hoaxes cooked up by “Democrats, Marxists, communists, and fascists,“ Roy Cohn would be proud. But a scorched-earth defense by offense is not only morally offensive; it is a pattern of deception that is scorching the Earth itself.
Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock),49 brief meditations on faith and life, Brooklyn Park, MN, July 19, 2023.
Views from the Edge 